Building Performant Models with The Mixture of Experts (MoE) Architecture: A Brief Introduction

The Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture is a machine learning framework that utilizes specialized sub-networks called experts to optimize model efficiency and performance. MoE models consist of multiple smaller neural networks, each focusing on specific tasks or data subsets, with a gating network directing input to the most appropriate expert. This approach reduces computational costs, enhances resource usage, and improves model performance by only activating relevant parts of the model for each input. The MoE architecture has several benefits over traditional neural networks, including increased efficiency, scalability, and specialization. However, it also presents challenges such as increased complexity and more complex training procedures. Applications of MoE models include natural language processing, computer vision, and speech recognition.